Today,roller skating (滑旱冰)is easy and fun. But many years ago, it wasn't easy at all. Before 1743, peoplenever tried skating on wheels. That changed because of a man named John JosephMerlin. Merlin's work was making instruments. In his free time he liked to playthe violin. Merlin was a man with many ideas and many dreams. People called hima dreamer.

    One dayMerlin received an invitation to go to an important party. He was very pleasedand a little excited. As the day of the party came near, Merlin began to think.He wanted to find a way to make a wonderful entrance at the party. Merlin hadan idea. He thought that he would attract a lot of attention if he could skateinto the room.

    Merlintried different ways to make himself roll. Finally, he decided to put twowheels under each shoe. These were the first roller skate shoes. Merlin wasvery proud of them. He dreamed of arriving at the party and skating into theroom while playing the violin. He was sure that everyone would be verysurprised.

    On thenight of the party Merlin rolled into the room, playing his violin. Everyonewas really surprised to see him. There was just one problem. Merlin had no wayto stop his roller skating. He rolled on, playing the violin. Then, with alleyes on him, Merlin hit into a huge mirror on the wall. The mirror broke intomany pieces with a very loud noise. But nobody forgot Merlin's wonderfulentrance after that.

People think children should play sports. Sports are fun, and children stay healthy while playing with others. However, playing sports can have negative influence on children. It may produce feelings of poor self-pride or aggressive (攻击性的) behavior in some children. According to research on kids and sports, 40 million kids play sports in the US. Of these, 18 million say they have been shouted at or called names while playing sports. This leaves many children with a bad impression of sports.

Many researchers believe adults, especially parents and coaches, are the main cause of too much aggression in children's sports. They believe children copy aggressive adult behavior. Parents and coaches are powerful teachers because children usually look up to them. Often these adults behave aggressively themselves, sending children the message that winning is everything. At children's sporting events, parents may shout at other players or cheer when their child behaves aggressively. As well, children may be taught that hurting other players is acceptable, or they may be pushed to continue playing even when they are injured. Children watch adult sports games and see violent behavior replayed over and over on television.

As a society, we really need to face up to this problem and find out the causes behind them. Parents and coaches should act as better examples for children. They also need to teach children better values. They should teach children to enjoy themselves whether they win or not. Winning is not everything. In addition, children should not be allowed to continue to play when they are injured. Sending a child with an injury into a game gives the child the message that health is not as important as winning. If we make some basic changes, children might learn to enjoy sports again.

Language learning begins with listening. Children are greatly different in the amount(数量) of listening they need before they start speaking, and children who start speaking late are often long listeners. Most children will"obey (服从)"spoken instructions some time before they can speak, although the word"obey"can almost not describe the cooperation (合 作)shown by the children. Before they can speak, many children will also ask questions by gestures and by making noises.

People agree that babies enjoy making noises, and that during the first few months babies use one or two special noises to show their happiness, pain, friendliness and so on. But since these are not a kind of communication, language. From about three months old they play with sounds for enjoyment, and by six months they are able to add new sounds to their words. This self-imitation (自 我 模 仿) leads to deliberate(故意的) imitation of sounds made or words spoken to them by other people. The problem then appears — can people take these imitations as speech?

It is a problem we need not get our teeth into. The meaning of a word depends on what a special person means by it in a special situation, and what a child means by a word will change as he or she gets more experience of the world.

Playful and meaningless imitation of what other people say continues after the child has begun to speak for himself or herself. I wonder, however, whether anything is gained when parents try to use this ability to teach new sounds.

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Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was remembered as the Godfather of Apple.